Break your habits through movement

Break your habits through movement

There are so many invisible rules we follow, often without knowing it. Whether it's an instruction your mother gave you in childhood about sitting up straight, or that as a woman you should keep your knees together as an expression of virtue, or that you shouldn't raise your head above the ground because that's haughty...As well as physical advice from your sports or yoga instructor to raise your shoulders a certain way or keep your belly in... Postural patterns that they once thought were ‘right’ for everyone.

Most of us walk around with a lot of conscious or unconscious instructions and assumptions about how we should be in our bodies. And slowly we are losing the ability to listen to our body -our natural intelligence- in the first place instead of giving our responsibility and sovereignty to another person ‘because they will know what is good for us because they are the expert’. Another such assumption!

Two years ago, I started training as a Quantum Human Design coach. Human Design is like a personal energy map of you. It teaches you how your personal energy field works. It acts as a roadmap that gives you an entry point to discover who you are, how you experience and process the world, how your system can help you make good decisions and what you can do to stay closer to your true self. It helps you get to know your inner sensory compass. And it helps you live that story you have felt in your heart all your life. The story your soul came to earth with to share its gifts, gain life experiences and complete old lessons.

Looking at a Human Design body map is also a bit like looking into a Mirror. It shows you your personality traits, your talents, your wisdom, and your vulnerabilities. And it shows you where you are disconnected from your true self. Where you think about yourself in a fragmented way instead of in your wholeness.

It also shows you where you struggle with limiting beliefs and where you live by rules imposed on you by the world or where you have unconsciously or consciously adopted beliefs and thinking patterns of others, or adopted or reinforced the energy of others. In (Quantum) Human Design, this is called conditioning. Conditioning is the way you have learned to behave in response to your life experiences, your family patterns and beliefs, and how you experience the energy of the world. Some of it is great and some of it really limits us to be in touch with who we are in the heart of our being. Your neurobiology also has conditioning in the way neural networks work in your brain that create habitual patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions.

The latter is what makes the Human Design roadmap overlap very nicely with what Moshe Feldenkrais -the founder of the Feldenkrais method- says about learning habitual patterns, and how our system plays a role in this by the way it functions and is programmed to protect us from emotional/physical pain.

Feldenkrais practitioners approach movement as a mirror for becoming aware of what you have consciously and unconsciously internalized in terms of rules, learned instructions, beliefs, and values throughout your life. It shows you how you have come to attach certain meanings to certain words, stories, and images, which have led to a misalignment with your physical-emotional being. It shows you where you are not in connection with yourself and where you think fragmented of yourself instead of sensing your wholeness. On the other hand, it also puts you in touch with the voice and wisdom of your body and who you are beyond the stories and in the here and now.

To mature, in both the Feldenkrais method and Quantum Human Design, means becoming aware of this unconscious conditioning. and what is true for you in this. And that you start making other choices, choices that are in tune with who you are and what you need and want for yourself.

It invites you to explore where can you let go of what limits you in being authentically yourself and taking good care of yourself. Where you need to create a more accurate self-image and start living more of your truth in the way you perceive, feel, think, react, make decisions, choose, do, and give meaning to what you perceive, feel, and think.

From both the Feldenkrais neuro-physical point of view and the Quantum Human Design metaphysical, and archetypical point of view, this is what really aligns you with your unique energy blueprint: your potential, power, creativity, health, the talents of your soul and how you use your body and life energy most joyfully and efficiently to live the story in your heart.

Do you want to get to know yourself better?

Check out this retreat in which I help you discover how to use your energy more optimally so you can enjoy yourself more, be more yourself and ‘use’ your body and nervous system more kindly and according to their way. So that you can start to release prolonged tension, pain and overwhelm.

    Testimonial by Rebecca Heloise Faro

    I’ve been to a few of Pingel‘s NIA classes & I can really recommend them. For me NIA is a mixture of guided movement & free movement, working with a part of the body to bring more fluidity & strength to the muscles of the body. It helps with coordination & is a gentle & strong workout. Pingel has great music & brings a real aliveness & vitality to her guidance of the class. It’s an overall fun experience, GO YOU’LL LOVE IT!!

    Rebecca Heloise Faro
    dancer, Spain

    Testimonial by Soosan Tam

    “I have had a few individual lessons from Pingel.
    She did for me what I have not been able to achieve on my own before. I could feel safe for an hour, and be comfortable, be interested. Be and breathe, without a pulled-up harness. It was an entirely new experience, and I didn't have to instruct myself to "let go". My analytical head did not have to participate and it was a relief. Finally, for once, not trying my best and still getting results.”

    Soosan Tam
    The Netherlands

    Testimonial by Vivian Cook

    “I had Feldenkrais lessons from Pingel for several years. She is a very competent and creative teacher and I always left her classes feeling balanced and more in tune with my body. I have a history of broken legs and after an accident, which left me with a head injury and a broken shoulder and hip, it was through Feldenkrais that I learnt how to walk better without pain. I highly recommend Pingel as a Feldenkrais practitioner.”

    Vivian Cook
    The Netherlands

    Testimonial by Hildegarde de Graaf

    In her individual guidance in Feldenkrais, Pingel touches me at my core, where it matters.
    Through her patience and calm subtle instructions, her questions, comments and insight about movements, I rediscover my body and also my mental state.
    It's an adventure I love to let Pingel take me on.

    Hildegarde de Graaf
    The Netherlands